


A Masque of Shadow and Flame

by QueenOfPlotTwists



Series: 31 Day Yu-Gi-October Halloween Challenge [1]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Assassins, Character Death, Costume Parties & Masquerades, Dark Fantasy, Darkshipping, Fae & Fairies, Female Yami Bakura, Gothic, Halloween Challenge, October Prompt Challenge, Other, Poison, Poisoning, Rated for blood, Sexual Themes, Vampires, victorian gothic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:26:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26750590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenOfPlotTwists/pseuds/QueenOfPlotTwists
Summary: A Masked ball on a glittering black moon night is the perfect rendezvous for assassins...and secret lovers. And moment are more magnificent—nor mysterious than the masked Balls of the Faerie Queen, Bakura, the Faerie Queen’s Assassin didn’t expect much excitement—until an usual stranger steals a kiss...Day one of 31 Day Y-G-October/Halloween Prompt ChallengePrompt 1: Poison
Relationships: Yami Bakura/Yami Yuugi
Series: 31 Day Yu-Gi-October Halloween Challenge [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947991
Kudos: 5





	A Masque of Shadow and Flame

**Author's Note:**

> So I have a confession to make...I did not write this in one day. I could never HOPE to write anything like this in one day-or in a month. I actually started this months ago when Covid first hit as a way to restore my sanity but hit a snag with it (despite the chemistry Atem and Bakura have they are VERY hard to write in conversation) and the beginning went through no less than a dozen edits.  
> BUT Seth's Kiss challenge inspired me to finish the piece and to my delight it fit the them of Day one of my new October/Halloween Prompt Challenge perfectly!
> 
> Now, this piece is part of a Halloween/Horror prompt series I discovered years ago on AsagiStilinski's page years back for a Halloween/October challenge that I fell in love with and decided to partake in this year: tagged/october-writing-challenge?fbclid=IwAR1skzD85Zm0qCN2i1bP198-gyskUMXRZBvN3k-YC4iV_krxz1xo2en4Tk
> 
> As there are three lists: the first two and the V2 version I personally decided to do the V2 version.
> 
> I was hoping to update this last night to spread the word a little more but things happen...
> 
> Anyway...I am VERY proud of this piece!
> 
> Few warnings: Female Bakura (because she's awesome), mentioned of blood, character death, poisoning, dark faeries, gothic and surrealism and a shit ton of imagery!
> 
> Song theme: Deadly Romance by Matthew Llewllyn
> 
> Day 1 of 31-Day Y-g-October/Halloween Prompt challenge
> 
> Prompt 1: Poison

A Masque of Shadow and Flame

It was a glittering new moon night, the second of the month so that the sky was at its darkest, the stars their brightest and most seductive and the moon, hidden behind the shadows so only a ghostly, guileful outline was visible, it’s most treacherous. It was the sort of night where Devils gather to dance in the dark and the Fates play dice, exerting their capricious sway and cast the celestial bones unraveling the futures of kingdoms and continents. A sort of dark where anything could happen and even the most carefully laid plans could be torn asunder come dawn. The sort of glittering ghostly dance of brightness and shadow where fortune favored none but assassins and secret, surreptitious lovers.

It was the perfect night for a masked ball.

Of all the imaginative innovations of mortals, whether it was the French Masque or the Victorian Masquerade, the Masked Ball was, without doubt or question, Bakura’s favorite invention. Far beyond the masks and the magic, the costume and the colors, the mystery and the madness was the intoxicating liberty such an atmosphere provided. With deliverance from judgement, the locked cages of title, name and identity opened; and all sumptuary laws suspended: all were free of constraint and allowed to be as lively and vivacious as they liked. Lost to uncontrolled vigor in riotous swirls of color and costume as if to purge their very souls of excess and extravagance, idols that could only be extinguished in the dark and obscurity a mask provided.

Her costume and gown were chosen specifically for it. In direct defiance of proper fashions and colors, she wore a bold French concoction: a ruffled overlay, the deepest of midnight curled in umbral waves over a sweeping mass of wintery-white skirts, the hems embroidered with spiraling lacework of black velvety birds with shimmering gossamer curled like smoke around her arms in lieu of gloves or sleeves and an ebony bodice sparkling with a rainbow of gems not unlike the glimmer of a raven’s wing. In combination, shimmering midnight plumage burst from the back of either side of the bodice and pinned in the back just beneath, a sleek black feather cloak spilled out in the illusion of wings. Absent gaudy trim, a bejeweled stomacher hugged her slender waist, a matching necklace draped low over her throat and jeweled bangles adorned each naked wrist: like a magpie who boasted its treasures, proudly rather than keep them confined to a nest. Sleek, subtle, but sumptuous as shadows, effortless in her elegance and mystery and all the more vivacious.

For the Masquerade was a secret, sacred place: a liberated parallel dimension within the prudent bars of prim and proper society, a Fairyland in the heart of the dull dwellings of mortals, a Greenland both free from and rebelliously within the confines and constraints of the toxic city. Here, true liberation existed to those whose identity was completely shrouded in mystery behind a mask. Incognito, a dragon spitting fire could kiss a virgin—and did so—without repercussion or some pompous mother screaming scandal. Unknown, a strict and stern matron could flirt outrageously with a jester young enough to be her son one minute and kiss an acrobat the next. Disguised, engaged girls and promised men would slip away to make love in carriages, gardens or under staircases: all without being recognized. There were no judgmental eyes or disapproving gestures, or gossipers conspiring—only madness, mystery and magic in all its weird, wild and wondrous glory, a nostalgic dream born of shadow and starlight. More often than once, Bakura wondered if the Venetian founders of the trend as well as those who revived it were in fact returned mortals inspired by the festive Faerie revels they’d been spirited away too.

Steeping out of the carriage with dizzying exuberance and into the welcoming night and all its promises, she made to ascend steps beyond archway of tangled flowering vines and into the briar labyrinth of forested hedges beyond, she would’ve melted into the darkness completely had the Duke not snatched her arm.

“You’re company was most enjoyed tonight. Must our time come to an end?” Words rolled off his tongue to charm her. His voice spoke of something coy and expectant though a pleading edge crept into the flamboyance of the whine.

“I’m afraid that it must,” She gave a small impatient sigh. Her voice warm like whisky by the fire. “I trust you will keep our encounter discreet.” She curled her fingers as though to stroke his cheek. Instead, she unwound his fingers from her arm with infinite patience.

Misinterpreting the gesture, the young Duke’s hands turned under hers until their fingers curled and gripped and laced together. His were tight and unyielding like the stubborn roots of an oak tree in the midst of a vicious storm. Hers hung careless with the loose-fingered grip of indifference, neither rejecting nor receiving the fierce embrace, but merely enduring it.

“Or…” His lips slid into a surprisingly sweet smile before his voice darkened and drawled. “You could forget your business altogether?” His eyes gleamed and his words ground to a rasp, rough and raw and ravenous as though overcome by an unquenchable fervor. “Become my mistress! I would dress you like a princess…and ride you like a mare.”

Those handsome hawkish features accentuated his suave charisma and rakish smile all set in a handsomely tanned face framed by a crown of dark hair. She’d never have considered him if her were not. Those sparkling green eyes had reminded her of a sprigan who’d entertained her long ago. If he _had_ been a sprigan and not this pampered, petted creature, the privileged prodigy of some ductal heritage destined for dullness, he might have held her attention for longer than the promised hour.

Lowering her eyes until they were half-shaded, she slipped her fingers free and pulled a purple vial from her bosom. Seductively dipping a single finger inside, she swirled around the purple liquid then generously applied it to her plump pretty lips. His gaze grew bolder though it never reached hers, but rather roved lower, growing brighter and hungrier with no hint at subtlety: she could’ve stood their decapitated and bleeding headless and he’d never have noticed.

Long-legged, slender hipped and subtle thighed, shapely shoulders and a collar that spread like wings, rich olive skin that boasted of hot suns and foreign lands and long, loose hair, white and wild as a winter storm: the woman was too beautiful by half! All but her smile was hidden beneath her luminous mask: a soft black velvet tapering to a point like a bird’s beak. Silver swirls about the eyes and an unfurling of magnificent black plumage in symmetrical curls with iridescent shimmers of blue, green, purple and teal underscored the silver encrusted emerald of the forehead. Coupled with the shadow and light of her gown, the cut of its ruffled and swirls both concealed and accentuated by the shadowy sweep of her skirts, the voluptuous curve of bosom exposed by the cut of her bodice, but sculpted to move with the curve of her body, and the saucy wink of her jewels in their she was like some ethereal shadow, a magpie, masquerading as a woman. A swirl of shadow and starlight, and eclipse of the dark black sun and the pale silvery moon, a monstrous concoction of light and darkness, as though she, herself, were something only half-dreamt, a conjuration born of an hour’s magic.

Yet in spite of all these trappings, most alluring about her were her eyes: dark, deep and penetrating like smoldering emeralds, alive and bright and sparkling with a mischief that promised things.

Those eyes were on him now, half-lidded and mesmerizing, so dark they appeared black as shadow behind an emerald haze. Her long nails, painted black, tapped enticingly over the arc of his hand. Her lips approached his with an aching slowness and he was quick to receive her—only for her to slip free and step back so that he kissed nothing but air.

“No.” A laugh was her answer. There was neither coyness nor disgust in the tone, merely indifference and the sweep of her shadowy skirts. It was even worse than rejection and she knew it well. Such was the game, and nothing weakened a man more than to have his ego stroked just before his pride was rendered.

“You think you’re so clever!” Anger flashed across his face, lip quivering with temper not unlike a child that had too often been spared the rod. “So fine and untouchable…well I know better! You are nothing but a slut!”

“Oh, my,” she moaned, swooned, and touched her heart as if wounded: dramatic and derisive. “Such an unjust insult.” She laughed, a vicious bark of sound that shattered the child’s bravado. “Like I have never heard _that_ one a thousand times before.” She advanced over him so close he slid backwards in vain to escape the onslaught of her ferocity. “How about calling on me once you’ve imagined something more creative, you pompous, overblown, pediculous rakefire!” She punctured the final insult with the kiss he’d craved and it was the cruelest thing she could’ve ever done: destroyed the fantasy of those lips.

He went to scold her, but found his throat tight and his words strangled. A gasp froze in his throat. An intense cough escaped him so rough and fierce he struggled to breathe and it was several long moments before he was able to draw a proper breath. He licked his now dry lips and it was with another gasp, this one of horror, that he tasted something sweet.

He whirled on her, his eyes wide and wild with shock.

She stood aloof and unapologetic, replacing the purple coloring of her lips, a color both deep and bright and full of poisonous promises.

“Do give the Duchess my regards,” she sneered and blew him a kiss and the way her coy smile curled would not be out of place on a trecherous crow’s or a cunning serpent. “ _Darling_.”

The carriage disappeared down the road, leaving her alone to find her way in the dark. She swaggered off through the shadows: silent, secret and swift as if she were one of them.

She spun towards her destination, canvasing the full measure of the obscured vista: spindly turrets and towers rising from the ancient surrounding forests like the stony points of some ancient forest god’s stony crown for, like all the hostess’ bold conceptions, it disregarded traditional decora in favor of the more fantastical: it was not some mediocre _Stadthaus_ within the city proper or even some prettily tamed country house in the country, but a glorious untamed, crenellated structure favoring unusual slopes and off angles atop a forested hillside deep in the recess of the wilderness far beyond and above the conventional norms of popular society where the farmlands grew more mountainous, more forested, more otherworldly.

The popular ancestral style of wide open lawns and perfectly manicured landscapes surrounding a grand central house that took up the totality of one’s vision was ignored and abandoned entirely for a more organic, agrarian layout. One that twisted and turned and moved with the shadows and the natural ascending flow of the landscape so that each step through it was a journey of discovery and splendor.

Bakura eagerly pursued hers.

There was no open courtyard, no well-kept road beyond ivy wrought iron gates, no fountain in the courtyard and groomed trees cultivated into reading nooks or picturesque flower beds arranged so that one might take a leisurely stroll through, but a tangled forest, overgrown and wild with its own untamed beauty. Unlike the meticulously manicured man-made construction it _breathed_ , embracing its wildness and the secrecy of its splendor. Two grand oaks, old in years, framed the entrance and twisted in a way that resembled less like stately garden posts but the curbed arch of a doorway into Fairyland, lively boughs bent in a gesture of welcome, that she was all too eager to accept. Vacant classic neatly trimmed bushes and holy white blossoms, these were towering web-like vines strung across low-hanging trees and hedge groves dominated by fiery oranges, passionate crimsons, enchanting purples and mysterious blues. Nature had not crept in along the edges and reclaimed groomed, orderly corridors but had been allowed to grow and thrive uncivilized in a twisting tangle of tunnels and tracks, a lacework of unruly roots and blooming weeds, vine-draped branches and rebellious wildflowers. The air ripe with the deep green scent of growth and decay.

Tiny stone animals, speckled throughout, peeked out from between the bushes and shrubs like a mismatched sculpture garden. Far from the warm circles of light casts by the manor’s windows, shadows seemed to dance and creep in the crevices between trunks, like shy children eager to see the invited but not wishing to get caught, where moonlight and starlight penetrated the dark like uninvited guests. Paths, seemingly vague, opened to an orchard grove set up so one could read or drink tea in the shadow of a weeping willow, or rest beneath a pergola draped in blooming wisteria or stumble upon a babbling brook where the statue of a fish-tailed woman rested among the cattails. Occasionally a wrong turn might lead to a secret pond green with algae and dotted with water lilies or an argental meadow so that the trek to the manner itself was a journey and a discovery: a wild whimsical Wonderland inviting peace and pleasure but encouraging freedom and the unshackling of society’s chains.

She could’ve spent the whole night in that Green world garden. Lost in her wanderlust. Exploring its arbors, wandering its ambages and searching for its hidden treasures and wished more than anything that she could. Alas, she spotted the pointy-roofed towers and diamond-panned turrets both jutting and undulating along the connecting crenellations, curving into full visibility with uneven slopes that resembled the back and spines of sleeping dragon just beyond the distance and new there was no longer any denying her destination.

As one had to journey through the sharp turns and winding paths, the manor’s vista was visible only in glimpses: the result of the slow advancement was indeed a novel effect. A true work of glamorous grandeur, it was kin to both a gothic abbey and an ancient castle. The sloping dragon-like spine of its crenellation towers were that of some sleeping ancient giant, yet the finely pointed spires connected by a web of flying buttresses were branched like trees forming long, oblique windows: kaleidoscopic stain glass glittered in harlequin hues rather than a single image as though the forest had donated itself to its construction. Gables jutted forth in odd places, balconies sprang from turrets whose windows became doors and lace-like tracery was so richly and realistically painted as to resemble the swirling shapes of flowery vines and boughs heavy with fruit.

Wonderment and whimsy had all lent itself to the style of the construction invoking exuberant bursts of color, vibrant vegetal ornamentation and dramatic twists and surprises about every corner and turn as though it had been imagined into being. Not built, but dreamt. Brought to life from some other century. Some other world—a true testament to Her Ladyship’s outrageous and unapologetically august taste in everything, including architecture.

Bakura understood well why this was the Lady’s favored palace.

True to form, the interior defied all sense of normalcy and reality: a reverse labyrinth the grandly ornate double-doors obediently opened not to an open foyer and grand hall from which all other rooms and stair ways branched off like the limbs of a tree promising a moment’s exploration and nothing more but a monstrous main hall, both grand and cavernous, from which spiral stairs, arched halls and glass doors splintered in a maze of twisted hallways and splendid rooms. The heart of it all, the fantastic grand ballroom where the illustrious masquerade took place.

Bakura absorbed the full force of the masquerade and its affect was dizzying, an event made all the more spectacular by the room itself. Gargantuan in size, towering pillars of spiraling black vines spiraled into majestic trees speckled with colorful carved roses. Blooming branches spread wide towards the high vaulted ceiling, convoluting into the twisted, flying arches of the buttresses and eaves, strung with a myriad of flickering fairy lights twinkling like fireflies or trapped stars. Between their boughs, colorful stained glass panes winked in the light casting harlequin hues across the dancers below. Bolts of silk and brocade cascaded down the walls and in feathery tendrils between pillars. The dance floor in contrast sported a pattern of monochromatic green tiles checkered with silvered glass embedded in the floor Bits of mirror embedded in the walls and floor reflected fractured images: a sliver of a dragon’s face, broken bits of wings, an entanglement of limbs, a thousand faceless eyes. The whole of it crafted the disorienting effect of some weird mythic forest equal parts splendid and strange, before, with a blink, the world rearranged itself back into its proper order.

Like all the Queen’s extraordinary and outrageous creations, it was a marvelous spectacle, both sublime and twisted. Everything was opulent, sumptuous and excessive. Skirting through the entranceway, flanked on either side by silk dances in contrasting costumes of solar white and star-spangled midnight drapery, and swept up into the dancing thrall, Bakura could not help but wonder who was human and who was not and laughed. Each step pushed her in a new direction, full of weirdness and bizarre splendors.

Entertainers slipped and slithered between the forests of pillars and glissaded across pedestals like mobile statues juxtaposing fierce frozen dragons and prowling petrified beasts. Imps that may have been real or tricks of the light flitted about the rafters. Occasionally, a treat would disappear and you might catch a glimpse of a spaded tail, a bat’s wing, the quiver of a cat’s eye. In lieu of a prodigious guided staircase centerpiece, two enormous floor to ceiling windows offered an unobscured view of the labyrinthine grounds outside and the night sky beyond, the perfect backdrop for the great grand orchestra and the beautiful exotic woman draped in gossamer singing opera to a Venetian waltz in a high, sweet voice.

The musicians struck up a minuet as she entered. There was dancing and dinning, spinning ballerinas and jumping jesters, jugglers balancing on huge balls, musicians and violinists playing contradicting tunes. Fire-spiters mimic dragons alongside mimes bent to improvised skits. A double-face masked contortionist did a splendid impression of a spider. Acrobats performed gymnastics and ribbon twirlers advertised their bodies with delicate innocence. All of them elevated on grand pedestals speckled throughout the ball room like a perpetually moving sculpture garden. Trapeze artists swung aerodynamics through the air where a majestic mural sported mesmerizingly graphic depictions of fantastical beasts immortalized in colored glass. Nothing else impeded the vision. In place of chandeliers, arborous candelabras, the golden boughs heavy with thousands of ivory candles, flickered wildly about casting shadows and commanding them to dance with the colors. Music fluttered about in tumulus tunes juxtaposing the somber elegance of a Venetian waltz with the wild, riotous abandon of Bocconi folk tunes so that the air itself vibrated with a wild giddiness, inspiring all in attendance to indulge.

She joined in next waltz, laughing wildly as she was tossed and twirled among the sea of dancing strangers and performing podiums. Costume wearing guests waltzed and servers riding unicycles offered champagne, savory hors d'oeuvres and sumptuous sweets. Courtiers and commoners frolicked and flirted with aristocrats and artisans and waited on serfs and servants while the most juxtaposing of all couples slipped inconspicuously into shadowed halls or stole away up spiral staircases for a more lusty rendezvous upstairs for the whole second level was a golden vegetal balcony. All were costumed in colorful contrast, all were exquisitely masked, all were draped in silks and jewels and leaves and furs and donning elaborate hats and headdresses. Cloaked and gloved and incognito, even the noblest, strictest, stuffiest and most fastidious of aristocrats were free to flirt outrageously, tease mercilessly, love unconditionally, indulge openly, and make love debaucherously: lifting their skirts but never their precious silk and velvet masks.

In the wide, passionate patterns of the livelier mazurka, no one bypassed Bakura’s hand: the clasps passionate, the grips fierce and absent any formal stiffness. The gaiety of the dance all the more energizes as she flamboyantly flirted and unapologetically seduced her partners with sultry glances and soft words. One particular pair of frosty blue eyes stood and watched her unblinkingly as she traded steps with a courteous elder in a full-head unicorn mask, was passed to a horned gentleman and stole a kiss from a Fire-spitter appropriately garbed in a dragon costume just after he finished another flame thrower. His lips hot and tasted of whisky. Each revolution took her past those icy blue eyes who never left her. She caught them staring and delivered a saucy wink. A predatory smile was traded in exchange.

_Caught him._

The dance wound down to its final promenade and when it ended in a brazen, asymmetrical series of quarter notes, Bakura delivered herself away from the dance floor entirely with an enticing shake of her oh so subtle hips. She pushed through the crowd with a wide-armed shrug with no need for grace or permission and wove past acrobats leaping in complex intertwining circles between pedestals. Shoving her way past the pillars where a series of clear-glass double-doors offered vibrant views of the gardens and grounds outside in place of windows and stepped out on to one of the private balconies and waited.

The night was cold and cruel and unforgiving, the cold air nipping at her uncovered shoulders like spiteful icy sprites forcing her to pull her cloak tight around her shoulders. Her impatience growing, she debated merely abandoning the audacious chore when the doors thundered open behind her. Or rather an enormous set of fingers sporting glittering jeweled rings, as ostentatious as it was obnoxious that curled into a fist then a hand.

The oaf it belonged to was bulky, brutish and built like a brawler: wide shoulders, long arms and thick of waist. He dwarfed her easily and not his strong, sophisticated jaw, expensive trappings or the rugged face framed by a neatly trimmed mess of dull yellow hair could hide his brutal vitality. The rest of him was gilded all over in gaudy gold, trimmed in expensive pure white fur and at least half a dozen jeweled brooches in audacious procession: such an abhorrent display was clearly a distraction of some kind. Or an over compensation. For a costume, he’d donned an exquisite Swedish silver wolf fur coat, the hood of which was a hewn-off wolf head over his own. Its fangs curled over his brow, its muzzle drawn back in a snarl, its eyes soulless blue beads: his own grotesque version of a mask.

 _Morbid_ , Bakura thought disgusted and felt a great swell of pity for the poor, proud soul whose remains were so shamefully and so unjustly used to make such a disturbing display.

Alas, sadly, she was in no position to be fussy. So she restrained the roll of her eye and plastered on her most charmingly innocent and alluring smile.

“The Lady looks like she’s lonely.” His charismatic smile did nothing to hide his predatory smirk nor the lust in his pale blue eyes.

“I certainly could be.” She lowered her dark lashes and gazed up from under them and said in her sultriest voice. “Are you offering, if I am?”

“I may be inclined to offer the pleasure of my company. Of course,” This time when he smiled it was lupine: the points of his teeth protruding over his fat lip like a wolf baring its teeth. “You understand, I cannot simply offer my services for free? What kind of man would I be?”

 _A better one you slimy, back-handed sewer pig._ She restrained the words and offered him only her sweetest expression and most glittering smile. “I certainly did not expect it to be.” Her eyes now beguiling, as she took his offered hand and defined proper custom by stepping backwards, leading him down the steps and into the secrecy and seclusion of the briar mazes. Her black nails tapping rhythmically against his bulging arm, the shadows offering her the chance to slip the purple vial free of her bodice once more.

He laughed victoriously. “I like a trollop with some sense!” He slapped his knees and it took all of her restraint not to snort as they started moving.

This one would be quick. 

“And where are we heading, my pretty?” He fixed her with that wolfish expression, his fat fingers sliding up to squeeze her arm.

Oh yes, this one would _absolutely_ be quick.

“You’ll see?” She reigned in her disgust with a musical chime and skillfully slipped her arms free with a seductive swirl of her skirts and slipped deeper into the labyrinth.

His eyes glittered with predatory delight. “What a fantastic coincidence. I happen to _love_ … _surprises._ ” His voice took on a hulkish, breathless tone that might have sounded husky if he were younger or perhaps less perverse. As he was not, it succeeded only in furthering to lower her already sour opinion of him. Best be done with this soon, less he shred that last of her thinning patience.

“Wonderful,” came a dramatic sigh and she leaned with easy lethargy against a thorny hedge. Her posture relaxed even as his eyes lowered and his hand started roving up her leg. “And might I know the name of my companion?” She leaned back just a bit so her bosom was on full display.

“Just call me Lord Howard.” He licked his lips wolfishly.

“Oh!” Her fist raised to her lips in a girlish giggle, the cork coming undone between her fingers. “You mean Lord _Keith_ Howard?”

“Yes.” Those predatory blue eyes trained on the valley between her breasts, his fat, greedy fingers eager to touch. “And you are?”

She smirked, pressed the vial to her lips.

In a single swoop, she grabbed the brute by his hair, kissed his shocked lips and forced the poison down his throat. She brought her knee up into his groin, shoved him to the ground and stomped the arc of her heel down on his neck.

In a low, controlled fury of pure and absolute disgust “You can call me Death,” she whispered letting all her menace bleed into her voice and pressed harder on his neck. The brute coughed and clawed at her heel but the velvet and leather lacings protected her well. Then he clawed at his neck and his face as if he could force the poison out through bloodletting but the huge eyes and the dry, raspy coughs were evident the belladonna had done its work.

Oh how she loved that what was wholesome to her was poisonous to the idiots she killed.

When he ceased the useless struggle she released his neck, pushed aside the thorny vines and put all her weight into kicking the brute’s corpse over the ledge. Letting his weight do the rest, she smiled as he toppled down the thorn infested hill and rolled off heaven knew where. Readjusting her skirts, she plopped down on a stone bench and propped up her feet for some well-deserved relaxation. When the ruckus inside become unabashed roars of giddy excitement in anticipation of their arriving host, she swung out her feet and started back inside.

By dawn they would find the brute’s body dead on the road of assumed consumption, for the savage oaf was known to be given to drink. She suspected the gossip would invent a much more entertaining tale to laugh over, but he was unpopular enough that none would think too deeply on the subject, content he was dead and done with.

She would come back later for his heart.

X X X

She was a vision of the finest eminence: tall with a willowy grace, alabaster skin like fine silk and a voluptuous full figure. In defiance of more conservative styles, she wore her cascading golden curls loose and luminous as winter sunshine streaked in iridescent jeweled tones. She boasted pouty lips and big brilliant eyes set in a lovely heart-shaped face though the rest of her otherworldly perfections were concealed behind a magnificent jeweled mask shaped like monarch butterfly wings of royal purple flashed with pale blue, brilliant green, and rich gold embedded with sparkling with jewels. Both complementing and offsetting her mask, she donned a magnificent opera gown of lustrous purple. True to her personalia, long, off the shoulder sleeves replaced opera gloves and short puffed ones, a stunning open corset exposed neck to naval in a voluptuous triangle and an explosion of layered skirts in alternating colors hugged her curves like a lover. Sewn into the fantastical fabric, quivering bejeweled moths and whimsical butterflies fluttered up the skirt and bodice. The back open to expose the blooming, prismatic wings.

Like her, the ensemble invoked a vision, something half-dreamt, ethereal yet somehow real. Beyond the velvet, her royal violet eyes glittered with mischief and magic. For here was a woman whose extravagances were as bizarrely strange as they were exhilaratingly enthralling. Especially her masked balls—for they invoked mystery and uncertainty, inspired madness and invoked heights of creative passion, brought to life dreams and delighted nightmares. Even the strictest and most conventional of circles found themselves beguiled and willingly obsessed like moths to the altar of her flame. With glamourous and unapologetic preponderance over the realm of fashion, style and exorbitant social gatherings; the Marchioness was called the Queen of Revels for good reason.

It was a title that was both ironic and unsurprising.

Surrounded by her entourage of admirers and lovers alike, she glissaded through the room and the Masquerade came alive once more with her presence. Slipping out from the shadows, Bakura caught her glittering eyes, smiled and the bombastic faerie woman bounded over to greet her.

“Bakura, darling! Kiss me instantly or I shall take great offence!” She swept the woman up in an embrace of startling force, so fierce and friendly Bakura felt like a little bird caught in a windstorm. And when she spoke it was with a dramatic, melodious whoosh of sound. Bakura returned the gesture with a bright, gleaming smile.

“My little magpie,” Mai whined and cupped the girl’s face. “You’re late.”

“You say that as though you expected me to arrive on time?” came Bakura’s playful response, affection brightening her smile. “It is good to see you, Mai. Or is it Marchioness?”

“Titles are shadows in this realm!” The Faerie Queen laughed uproariously. “And you know well you are only to ever call me Mai.” The harshness of her advisement was softened by the sincerity of her smile. “I trust your mission was successful?” She invited Bakura to take her arm with a gentle shove to her back, eyes glittering with amusement.

“Of course,” Bakura boasted proudly, eyes sparkling with eerily girlish mischief as she stroked a finger down her cheek. “They _always_ fall for a pretty face in distress.”

“He thought you pretty?” Mai asked, brow arched in surprise though her smile was wicked with delight.

“Pretty enough to fuck _,_ ” Bakura retorted with unapologetic vulgarity.

“As if he could ever be worthy of the privilege,” the Queen chimed, lips pouting.

“Just so,” Bakura sighed flamboyantly. “You can tell all your mortal companions and their daughters that they will _never_ need worry about _Lord Howard_ , ever again.” She said his name with a special venom.

“Good.” Mai grinned, sharply. “And did you enjoy his heart, my dearest?”

“I will go back for it later.” She brushed it off with a dismissive wave of her hand. “It will still be fresh. Which reminds me?” Her green eyes glittered greedily. “My payment?”

A pouty lower lip and a soft whine. “You assume I’m not good for it?”

“I _know_ you are,” came the coy response. “I just _want_ it.”

Mischievous delight transformed the Queen’s face. With a glittering smile, she pulled a velvet case free from the confines of her costume. “So impatient.”

With deliberate slowness, she maneuvered the case so each and every second of its tantalizing reveal was a torturous test of patience. All the while, excitement brightened Bakura’s eyes and her long fingers curled and flexed, giddy with barely contained exuberance until at last her prize was revealed in all its celebratory glory. And oh, what a resplendent prize it was: a radiant emerald that matched her eyes set in silver formed a brooch encircled with pearls and alternating gemstones of pale sapphire, soft jade and deep tanzanite.

Bakura scooped it up greedily admiring its shimmering luster and quickly pinned it to her bodice thus so the valley between her breasts beat and blazed with brilliancy. It complimented her costume perfectly. Her own dark eyes, transfixed on the brooch, shifted with the shadows and displayed various levels of brightness as she danced and spun admiring it and herself from all angels under the glittering glee of the Queen who was her monarch.

“You like?”

“Very much so,” Bakura confirmed settling her skirts until she resembled a dark wintery night or a perched magpie.

“Wonderful!” Mai giddily clapped her hands and looped the girl’s arm with hers. “But enough about business. Come!”

With a matronly tug, she guided her guest towards the dance floor. The two woman danced the next waltz, laughing wildly as they were tossed and twirled in complicated circled among the sea of dancers. The Queen’s giddiness was infectious and Bakura felt it as she laughed and danced and twirled and spun, all the while he eyes roamed as if waiting.

“Well, my dearest, how have you enjoyed my party?” the Queen asked when she spun Bakura back into her arms and crushed in her a hug just as the waltz ended. The one that started next was a slower, more somber performance made all the more hauntingly ethereal by the opera woman’s singing. It was once of Bakura’s favorites.

“Splendiferous, as always,” Bakura beamed, breathless. The two woman spun in wide circles beside the other. The Queen in color and flamboyance, brilliant as a butterfly, Bakura sleek and silent as a shadow. “It is absolutely fantastic! I would expect nothing less from the Queen of Revels, herself.”

Rather than responding with that ear-splittingly jubilant whoop of delight she was famous for, the Queen merely smiled. “Are you sure? You seem distracted, little magpie. Has something caught your attention?” a sudden thought sparked recognition in the Queen’s eyes and sheer and absolute delight transformed her face. “Or has someone?”

Bakura shuddered and grimaced. “Oh Mai, are we really going to have _that_ conversation again?”

“I cannot help it,” she wilted with that whine. “I promised your Unsainted Father, may one of my oldest and dearest friends rest well, that I would look after you. And what kind of Guardian would I be if I left my sweetest and dearest ward to her loneliness?”

Bakura snorted at the very thought of _her_ being anything akin to sweet unless it was a snakebite. “On the contrary, I have many loves to keep me company,” Bakura bragged proudly and thrust forward with a boastful swagger in advertisement of her sparkling jewels. “I’m wearing them all right now.”

“You _know_ I wasn’t talking about your jewels.” The humor was gone from her voice replaced by motherly sternness. “Jewels are lovely, but they do little to keep you warm at night. The offer no solace when you confess your secrets and no comfort when you whisper your troubles.”

“I disagree. I, certainly, do not need someone to take care of me. _Especially_ not a boy.”

“Oh-ho I know _that_ , my love, all too well, but surely even you must get tired of just _breaking_ hearts and not having at least one for yourself?”

“I don’t want them.” Bakura dismissed the idea with a wave of her hand. “And then ones whose hearts I _do_ break are all the more deserving of it.”

“That’s because you choose _boys_ ,” Mai corrected in her most matronly stern advice giving voice though tinged with the easy wit and casual wisdom of a woman well practiced in such acclivities. “And spoiled silly ones and that! What you _need,_ sweet magpie. Is a _man_. Or a woman. Or neither and both, but _someone_ mature enough to see the barbs of your beauty and wise enough not to seek to tame them, but _embrace_ them as all of Europe embraces the rose, not just for the majestic allure of her blooms, but the enticing _bite_ of her thorns.”

“We both know I am more belladonna,” Bakura corrected sounding vexed then sighed. “But you are not wrong.” As the tempo changed she allowed herself to be swept up, somehow feeling less dramatic and more drained. “Young men are so much trouble…” She licked her lips as giddy, greedy hunger consumed her features: her smile ravenous, her eyes predatory with an unfulfilled appetite. “But their hearts I could just _devour_!”

“You’re terrible, Bakura. I am being serious!” Mai couldn’t stop herself from laughing. As the music ended, she locked arms with her ward. “Now, I am the _last_ person on earth who will tell you to settle down and find a suitor but I _do_ want you to be happy. And I know you well enough that even _you_ want more than just a petty conquest, and don’t you dare deny it! I see that look in your eye whenever you come home from having your fun. You can hide your dissatisfaction but not your disappoint. Not from me. ”

Something struck about the Queen’s words and struck sharp though there was no malice in them, only motherly wisdom. Bakura skillfully hid her feeling behind robust chuckle, though it did little to fool the Queen, as she doubted it would. “You of all others, Madam, are encouraging me to practice monogamy? You who keeps many lovers and keeps them wrapped around her fingers as tight as her corset strings?”

It was both the juiciest of rumors and hardest, truest of facts.

“And I there’s,” Mai boasted instead of protested. “And say what you will about me, I have and still do love all the men I’ve allowed into my life as deeply now as I have the day we met.” She caught the girl in a loving embrace and offered in advice “I promise you this, my sweet magpie, there is nothing more pleasurable and more rewarding than loving and being loved by a man who truly embraces you...or a woman, if that is your preference, of course?”

In spite of her own nature or perhaps because of it, Bakura allowed the fierce embrace for just a moment longer before untangling herself. “A man has more to offer. But I promise you, Mai, if there is ever such a man, you will be the first to know. Speaking of which, I spy a few of your admirers now and they’re all patiently waiting for your illustrious attentions.”

“So it seems,” Mai offered her girl a saucy wink. “Enjoy, my darling!” She swaggered off with a loud laugh. Her steps were a fluttering glissade and she soon vanished into the awaiting arms of her admirers just as a new song started up. Not a tumulus beat that started low like a groan then rose in tempo before groaning again creating a sinister undertone.

Weaving her way through the throng of dancers and music and the miasma of perfume and sex, Bakura swaggered out of the way towards the long, low tables erupting with all things delicious and delectable and the delights of dozens of different cuisines. Bakura ignored them all in favor of her second true love: luscious cream swans and sparkling spun sugar unicorns, rich lemon cakes baked in the shape of roses and dripping with sweet, pink, strawberry icing; apple crisps, moist and flakey; little cakes of every size and variety smelt a song of cherry, raspberry and blueberry-lemon curd. There were little tarts glistening with black cherries and gooey strawberry jam, pies of spicy jewel plums and velvety red cupcakes topped with wine-soaked pears, a wide swirl of pancakes glistening with golden honey, still warm and sticky and hazelnut biscuits and a black forest cakes so rich and moist and dense it shown black and wet the crimson dolly beneath it, the frosting sparkling with rosettes and ribbons.

She devoured the smorgasbord, greedily, snitching strawberry cakes and blackberry tarts, slurping up a generous helping of scrumptious raspberry cream and shivered with delight as sugar crystals popped in her mouth. The flavors of sweet fruits and bakes loveliness burst upon her tongue, so delicious that she licked the plates and her fingers clean of juices.

Damn it, she should’ve worn a pocketed dress.

Here, she was content to slink into the shadows and tease and taunt and break hearts to her leisure. The Queen was not wrong about her. She _did_ often chase silly, spoiled boys as her lovers—all the better and easier to break their hearts when she tired of them before they eventually betrayed her. After all, most if not all the men in her life had, in some form or another, disappointed her. Her grandfather who had abandoned her in the woods mere moments after her dear mother died birthing and it was clear she, herself, would not be following. Her Unsainted father, who despite his adoration, all but left her to Mai’s care in favor of his own court dealings. The gentle folk of court who would rather she be unseen and unheard and never forgave her for being unabashedly and unapologetically neither. And a subsequent string of disingenuous suitors who promised much and delivered little. Jewels were so much more dependable though they _did_ tend to cause trouble, but then again, beautiful things often did. Look at her?

Grabbing, a goblet off the table, she filled it with the first wine she found and rose it to her lips—only to have it snatched away before she’d even had her first sip. She blinked, befuddled, just in time to see the thief down her drink in a single swallow.

Fury rising in her throat, she dove like an angry bird, ready to shriek and claw, only to be silenced once again—by the kiss he pressed to her lips in a quick, single swoop. In that moment he’d returned her purloined wine by forcing its sweetness passed her surprise-parted lips and down her throat. A strong honey taste burst upon her tongue instead of the sweet, fruity sensation she’d been expecting, mingled with just a hint of cinnamon and something else she couldn’t identify. Something spicy and strong and utterly exotic like a fiery sweet liquor. Fiery, yes, that was the word to describe the unexplained taste, fire. Whether it was the wine or the lips pressed so intently against her she did not know.

Before she could identify the truth of its origin, those lips and their sumptuous intensity rudely pulled away. Free from the spell they had wrought upon her and overcoming her befuddled disbelief, Bakura whirled on her rapscallion, fired and furious.

He was the most brazen being she’d ever seen.

Not beautiful, though he was certainly handsome—but _brazen_. He lounged against the table with the lazy grace of a relaxed predator. Bold and brilliant in a blazing scarlet slim-fitted frock coat studded with gold buttons that accentuated a set of strong, proud shoulders. The tail split into a fan of gold-tipped points appliqued with colorful flames thicker at the hems and curling as they climbed. The cuffs bore similar decoration. From wrist to shoulder burst bright, brilliant feathers layered like wings, prismatic and intensely hued with a shimmer of fire. Crimson pants adorned with more curling flames and a ruffled cravat boasted of long legs, firm hips and a powerfully toned chest.

A dramatically wide crimson cavalier-style hat brimmed with gold and blooming similar plumage highlighted a face full of angles: the finely chiseled point of his chin, the curve of his shapely cheeks, the audacious curl of his snarky smirk. Like her, his skin spoke of a land and culture far beyond that of European high society, but in contrast to her own dark burnt ocher, his caramel skin glistened a golden color as though embers smoldered beneath. Eyes like rubies glisten obscured behind a haze of golden mesh accented by sweeping curls of gold and rainbow fire—such was the design of his sleek scarlet mask. The whole ensemble was a bold fiery concoction, a phoenix rising not from the ashes but embracing both flight and life, a flamboyant defiance of the somber costumes and colors of the masque: Bakura was an absolute victim of the vanity.

Her determination fled her in an instant. 

There was something fierce and rough-hewn about his features—like he’d been made of wind and earth and flame and all these civilized trappings were little more than an inconvenience to him: a wild burning phoenix haughty in its immortality and celestial flare. He was twirling the now empty goblet between his fingers, all swagger and deliciously curved smiles. He licked his lips lapping up the remaining drops of wine—or the remains of her own lips.

At the memory her dampened fury fired alive and ravenous.

_Bold, brazen bastard!_

His gaze met hers, flushed and smiling beneath his mask. “Your gratitude is much appreciated by the way.” His voice was rich, his accent strange.

Bakura didn’t know if she should be impressed or infuriated and settled on irritated. “I cannot decide if you are either brave or stupid.”

“Oh?” He leapt up, bright-eyed exuberance took command of his features. “And why is that?”

“Because you stole my wine and then have the audacity to assume I would not seek vengeance.” She flashed a predatory smile, black-nailed fingers curling like talons.

She did not expect what he did next. He laughed. Threw his head back and uproariously laughed.

“My dear Lady,” the mock title rolled richly off his tongue. “I did nothing of the sort, it is _you_ who is the thief.”

“I did not!” Bakura protested, denying not the accusation but the act itself and was suddenly aghast, not by what she’d said, but by _how_ she’d said it. Like a petulant child. No, _worse_ , like a timid, immature girl denying some fanciful attraction.

It infuriated her. How dare he make her feel fanciful!

“Ah, but you did!” He waged a single petulant finger then produced the bejeweled goblet with a dramatic flick of his wrist as evidence. “You see, Madam, this goblet is mine. I’ve been using it all evening. It was quite rude of you to snatch it up without asking me.” His smile curled at the corners and the brightness of it illuminated his eyes even behind those golden screens. 

“However.” He whirled, caught the goblet and straightened, a clear haughtiness to his stance and by some curious effect of the light, the flames of his coat flickered as though alive and the feathers glistened and burned like rainbow-colored fire with each swaggering swish of his firm hips. “The wine you poured was, indeed, yours. I neither make nor made claim to it. Thus it was only polite of me,” he paused with a dramatic gesture to himself.

When he rose he flashed a bright, beaming smile. “To return it to you.” He punctured the statement with a roughish wink. He replaced his hat, allowing the golden spikes of his forelock to spill out like some tangled crown of sunbeams.

The lazy arrogance of it, the absolute lethargy, took her breath away.

She should’ve been irritated. She should’ve been furious. She should’ve been…anything. Instead she felt a fascinated intrigue, a salacious curiously, a lusty vigor that she had not been inspired for decades.

“Oh?” she dragged out that vowel, laced it with all her robust excitement. “Is that what you call it, then? Being polite?”

His eyes alighted at her challenge. “What else would you call it, my Lady?”

Again, with that nickname, only this time it excited her. She purposely curled her smirk, cocked her head not unlike a bird, and laughed out the word in an amused bark of sound. “Arrogance.”

He laughed. A rich, jeweled baritone as smooth and relaxed as thunder. “It cannot be both?” He challenged with an arch of his brow and a rising curl to his lips.

She could feel the agreement bubbling in her throat but swallowed it whole, damned if she said it.

He deflated a bit at her lack of response, a pout replacing the haughtiness of his smile, but his eyes remained undeterred. “Well, then,” he leapt up like an amber of a flicking flame, alight with a new challenge. “I suppose I will have to find some other way to amend myself in your eyes, won’t I?”

His eyes alighted with the challenge, bright and brilliant: the shine of fever. Or enchantment. Or both. And when he smiled, this time she caught the tips of his gleaming pointed teeth protruding elegantly over his caramel lips.

“Who are you?” she asked, knowing better than to demand his name. Her intrigue heighted by the sudden unknown curiosity: an excitement that brought both pleasure and fear, delighting her.

He swooped around her and behind the table, spread his winged arms in dramatic presentation, then pulled them—and his hat—back in reveal and removed his hat with a grand sweep of his hand that dropped into a low, courtly bow. Even his hair was fiery: a mass of shadowy flames dripped in crimson and threaded with highlights of purple and gold like a dancing black fire. Unobscured now the perfect lines and arcs of his face were on full display: the point of his chin, the sharpness of the fangs protruding over a wicked smile, the curve of chiseled cheekbones, the sweep of golden bangs against a firm forehead. Only the strip of his crimson mask and the golden opaque that masked his eyes disturbed the image. And yet it did not mar his beauty, but rather enriched it crafting a sense of mystery and aloofness that both compelled and made curious.

“You may call me, Atem,” he winked, smirked showing teeth in a display that made her bulging bird’s eyes sparkle with ravenous lust.

The cardigan, once replaced, tilted and untilted atop his head as though possessing of its own mind and was eager to make its opinions known with a ruffle of iridescent feathers. Each arc only seemed to accentuate those eyes: their crimson color burning even through the obscurity of gold mesh. An odd choice, and yet she could not fathom why it aroused such curiousty in her,

“And may I ask who I’ve had the pleasure of communing with this evening?”

She met the challenge with a bold declaration of her own, narrowing her eyes and sharpening her smile, one arm crossed over her bodice, the other lay lazily at her side, the pointed teeth of her smile, mocking. “You may call me,” she paused, her voice soft, as though whispering. “Bakura.”

“Bakura.” His eyes become shaded as he says her name. It rolls off his tongue like something sweet, and hot and dangerous and low. Like whisky by the fire. Like chocolate molten and poured down the throat. Like a relaxed roll of thunder just before a storm. “That means ‘glorious’, if I am not mistaken.”

The words vibrated down her spine. 

He set down the goblet, a golden treasure among the glittering petite fours and gleaming chocolate tortes. Plucked an éclair from the table and opened his mouth wide to devour it and making no effort to hide his pointed canines. He devoured it with a wolfish lick of his lips. “A glorious name for a glorious woman, no doubt.”

A bright, musical laugh. “Well, aren’t you a charmer?” she teased but surprised herself as it lacked the merciless seduction her taunts usually carried and popped a petite four in her mouth. Strawberry and creamed sugar exploded in her mouth and she hummed with satisfaction. “And what have you heard of me?”

Like Hell she would make the game easy for him—not matter how inexplicably he drew him to her with his blazing colors, sun-warm smiles and candle flame eyes. _She_ was no fluttering moth, she was the shadow and the darkness that hid poised to strike behind the glittering stars.

He met her first move with one of his own. “Oh I’ve heard many things.” He whirled back to the table, grabbed a plate and piled it high with cream puffs dusted in sugar, tiny triffles boasting whipped creams, tiny blancmanges white and snow and topped with cherries darker than cherries and black berries the dark shiny color of sin.

“That you are a magpie who guards her jewels like a fire drake guards its treasure. That you are a raven in disguise who devours the hearts of your lovers. Or that you are a witch who cuts them out and sacrifice them to a dark god in exchange for your unearthly beauty.” He refilled his wine class and tilted it back so the bloody liquid dripped down his shin then wiped it clean with the sleeve of his coat. The stain vanishing among the red. “That you use the Quern, or rather, the _Marchioness’_ favoritism to kidnap handsome boys into your bed and then cut out their hearts for said rituals, or that you do unrespectable jobs for her in exchange for your jewels. Or similar stories but in different versions.”

She snatched the blancmange with a bark of laughter and devoured the cake hole, feeling no shame as she licked her fingers clean and washed it down with a fresh glass of wine stolen from the pyramid of champagne glasses.

He laughed, a rich, sardonic bark of sound. “But I’ve learned better than to trust the rantings of jealous girls and jilted lovers, _especially_ if said jealous girls and jilted boys are mortals who play at crowns like drunkards plays dice.”

“And what if I told you they were all true?” She spun, spread a hand over her heart in introduction and did nothing to calm the wildness blazing in her rich green and black bird’s eyes whose haunting allure and lascivious gleam lured stupid men to their deaths. Had she a fan shed have fluttered it, prettily. As she did not, she merely swept besides him, impossibly close and yet untouchably apart.

Once more she became the creature: the silent, seductress whose entity many an arrogant fool naively thought and failed to triumph. An untouchable siren who could lay waste to a man’s heart with only a few words. A creature who knew well the power and danger of her beauty and never apologized for it, but _embraced_ it. “I’m afraid you’re going to have be more imaginative with your conversation if you wish to keep me here.”

He pursed his lips, arched a single brow. The shadow of a grin, that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Well, that one’s true at least.”

“And what, pray tell is that?” She arches a brow at the comment. Her smile sharp, but her eyes almost disappointed, not quite expecting but hoping for more.

“That you are not as sweet as your first perceive.” He grinned and took another sip of wine.

She snorted, almost amused and twirled the now empty champagne glass between her fingers. “Sweetness is merely the first expectation of seduction. My suitors expect it just as they expect me to be submissive and yet I am also expected to be sassy so long as it does not contradict them and seductive, so long as I behave and do as I am told, and somehow they think themselves as the winners of courtship and have the audacity to be upset upon the realization that not only have they lost the game but that they were never even a real player. Merely a marionette following the pre-scripted strings.” She turned to him with a wide, toothy smirk: that a wolf before he devoured a lamb. “Men of that variety think they are smart, the trick is to _keep_ making them think so until their…services, are no longer required.”

“And what do you expect?” he inquired with an almost bird-like tilt of his head. Stealing the slice of chocolate torte for himself he offered her the rest. “Or rather…” he paused deliberately to take a bite, raspberry juice dying those caramel lips red as blood before he licked them away. “What is it you desire?”

Taken aback by the unexpected question, she was too late to stop the bulging of her eyes. If he noticed, he did not inquire, merely waited for an answer: patient and attentive.

“I desire…” The words were a breathless pause, her tongue thick and useless, vacant of her characteristic sass and sarcasm. Witt and words failed her. The uncertainty sat like a stone heavy in her stomach, and yet fluttered like months of anticipation. She was used to being the Master, not the marionette: the spider who wove a careful web of entangled attachments, not some fluttering moth distracted from her moonward descent by the warm, seductive light of a candle flame.

She found the thought both terrifying and appealing in equal measures.

“To dance!” She drew herself up, haughtily. Those gallant green eyes darkened, as she held out her hand, a queen of the night extending an alliance to the prince of the rainbow sun.

He did not flinch of falter, and though his smirk and smile twisted and curled with confidence, his eyes were humble gracious as he bowed deeply and took her hand.

That was certainly fresh.

There was the slightest pause in the constant hum of conversation, when they entered. Myriad eyes turning to them in attention: Atem, his golden skin stark against the rainbow fire of his coat. Her a vision of shadow and starlight, the green of her eyes and jewels the only thing marring the vision of shade and tint. The contrast of him upon her arm—a sun chasing its shadow, a flame flickering to greet the darkness in a fiery kiss.

Her green eyes gleaming, raw and ravished like uncut emeralds, wild and primal in their most undomesticated state, Bakura was easily the most beautiful woman in all the room and her beauty cast a halo around her but not one of gold and sunshine and heavenly light, but silver and sin and sinister secrets brought to life only by shadow and starlight. And he was the rough-hewn fire, the kind that erupted into a wildfire laying waste to summer scorched forests, and in this light he cut a fine image of just that. As he removed his cavalier, in a grand bow of respect towards her, his spiked curls and costume caught fire in the candle light and even his skin glowed as if painted in pale luminous gold, as if the sun itself burned and blazed within him and the cavalier, once replaced, tampered the light only to keep its wildfire but burning out of control. The contrast of fire and shadow leant itself to the image of him. The sight of them together was a torment: a terrible passionate dream and a beautiful, unstoppable nightmare.

Their eyes glanced sidelong about the room at large: tigers, relaxed in their apex and all else were but flies lashing about their tails, too insignificant to even be bothered with. Other couples, timidly slunk away, until they were alone and all but took command of the dance floor.

The musicians struck another song, a vigorous tempo whose high chords and fluttering winds spoke of a Viennese waltz but one heavy on the organ and the baser piano keys crafting a sinister and subliminal undertone, a reverse of the popular but scandalous peasant dance. More seductive. More sinister.

The two of them beamed at each other: grins impish and imperious. They swept onto the dance floor, joining the throng of twirling dancers in a lively rotary. His hand pressed against her lower back, pushing their hips closer together and the moved together in a swirl of black and white skirts and rainbow scarlet whirling across a checkered forest of marbled tiles. Their hands met palm to palm, fingers interlacing, eyes meeting through their masks and even obscure she caught the fames burning there.

They swept about the ballroom turning in reverse clockwise circles interspersed with none rotating change steps, switching between direction and rotation. Pulling apart, arms spread as if to fly, then untwirling back into the other’s embrace. Always their fingers laces, always their eyes met. Their hips moved in tune, keeping rhythm with each other, and even Bakura could not deny the frantic fluttering of her heart whenever his legs entangled themselves within the folds of her skirts, whenever a step caused his chest to brush against hers, whenever they came together, breathless after a twirl and she found herself wanting nothing more than to kiss her.

They moved in both sync and contrast with the other: a fiery rainbow sun and a shadowy moon dancing together in the sky, an eclipse of light and shadow that compelled the tides to rise and the seas to shift, a blazing burning sun and a spangled starry night, and dancing shadow and a swirling flame.

They danced for the rest of the night. It could’ve been hours or mere moments trading conversations, exchanges of interests and invitation inter spliced with tales of childhood misadventures and life’s disappointments.

“You, I must admit, are quite the enigma…Atem,” she said and savored the taste of his name on her tongue, realizing it was the first time all night she’d said it.

“As are you, my Glorious Lady,” he teased as they split apart for another spin and came together. His breath a ghost upon her lips. “And yet I find myself at a disadvantage.”

“Oh?” she confessed to the curiosity just before she fell into another spin. “And why is that?”

“You have yet to answer my question?” He asked pulling her flush against him, their interlacing fingers tightening and those masked eyes, smoldering like embers, bore into hers. To Bakura’s own surprise, a breath caught in her throat and she knew it was not the stays of her down suddenly squeezing her lungs.

“And what question is that?” She brushed off his unbearable nearness with a casual shrug of her shoulders, and blamed her breathlessness on the passionate vigor of the waltz. There was a pause between this dance and the next and she used it to the tables and snatched a champagne glass from the pyramid and downed it in a single swallow. The mixture a cool bubbling brew down her throat, offering both clarity and oblivion. Atem smiled as they slipped away from the dance and its wild, reckless passion. Smirking at him over her empty wine class, she caught him leaning lazily against the table with all the relaxed grace of a predatory cat with its belly fully, and decided to test him. “Well?”

His smirk was sweet and rich like molten chocolate, his golden-covered eyes glowing faintly like the embers of a fire. “What do _you_ desire, Bakura?”

The use of her name and directness of the question speaking to her not as an ethereal, beautiful, half-dreamt otherworldly being, but _her_ : flesh, in breath and bone and blood and body. Never in all her life had she been so caught off guard by mere words. Her lips fell into a straight line, her eyes darkening, a lush meadowy deep green swamp of secrets and sensuality. “Every bird and beast in their truest of hearts has the same desire.” She explained, sipping champagne from a fresh class. “Even if sometimes it is simpler to ostracize one’s self in the peace of seclusion rather than endure the crippling loneliness of being unwanted company.”

“You seek understanding.” There was no surprise in his voice, surprising her. When she spun to him she saw the emotion flash behind the golden obscurity of his mesh, bearing into her with such intensity that the champagne class almost slipped from her fingers and yet she could not look away as he trespassed upon her soul and read it without permission. “I understand what you seek. You are both a woman and a creature who already has many things: power, wealth, connections, in addition to your natural grace, beauty and intellect, and yet despite all these accomplishments the most precious of which is still missing—your truest desire.” He paused, eyes softening with affection. His words are like whispers: soft murmurs warm as a lover’s embrace.

“And you of a mind that _you_ are what I am missing?” She drew back all sass, but braced her shaking hands against the table. Her hand squeezing the glass so tight it nearly splintered.

He drew back from her, distracted by a sudden tickle in his throat, proving a much more humble lover than she’d first expected. “I confess to feeling…inexplicably drawn to you.”

She wanted to snort, to flirt, to court: to do all the things she was used to—but he was not like her usual lovers, and never before had her heart beat this fast. “Of course, you do,” she boasted, proud and unabashed. “ _Everyone_ wants me.”

He’d caught the derision in her voice and frowned. “But not in the way you want them to.”

 _That_ caught her off guard: her illusion shattered a frown and fury replaced her flirtation.

Atem’s kind eyes did not waver. “It is why, disregarding our mutual attraction, you still do not trust me. You believe my wish is to save you,” A pregnant pause, “To tame you.”

Her black nailed fingers fisted at her sides and she slammed down her glass so hard champagne spilled over the sides.

Her laugh was a harsh, ironic sound, more bark that blithe. “It makes a truly romantic story, doesn’t it? A young good-looking man, so very dashing, saving the life of some lost little girl hidden in the shadows? And yet what is he but a normal distant man? Mediocre at best? As simple and ordinary as the furniture in an English country house.” She snorted and so they were—so they _all_ were. Mai was right, she always did pick boys. Pompous and spoiled or stolid and dependable, but always predictable. 

“But she, a child of the night and the shadows and the seductions of the dark—she is exciting, enticing, extraordinary in every way he is dull. Of course, he wants to possess her, to save her, to tame her, to have that darkness for his own, even as it terrified him. Such a woman, of course, can have lovers, as many as she wants, but a husband? Now that’s different. But surely he, _he_ , will be the one to _save_ her, the one who she will choose above all others, the one who she shall belong too—as though she could _ever_ belong to anyone.” She snorted again, flashed him a smile that was all teeth and eyes blazing with sardonic dismissal.

He did not interrupt her only listened to her furious derision. “How do you think such a tale can possibly end? There is only one way, and that is tragically. Soon the man will see that once she has been caught, once she is his, he simply cannot have her this way—she is too loose, too wild, too uncontrolled in her desires and man who are boring and practical fear what they cannot change or control above all else—especially their wives. The ordinary cannot belong to the extraordinary, so what choice have they but to make the extraordinary dull? To make the enticing, the exciting as ordinary and routine as Sunday services until she has become as passionless and unimaginative as him, and suddenly he is surprised to find that gone is all he has loved about her, and somehow _she_ is the one to blame?”

She snatched another champagne glass and downed it in a single swallow—and it was like drinking the sweetness of dreams: eternity and oblivion in a single swallow, though it brought neither comfort as it usually did.

“Is that what happened to you?” Atem’s question was neither pitying nor interrogative, simply and question. His voice so calm, so gentle Bakura almost wished to shake him, to get any reaction out of him.

She wiped her lips with her thumb. It came away dark and violet. “I am and have been called many things and I will not deny that all of them are true.” Her eyes gleamed. Her fingers traced the jewels at her throat, the brooch pinned to her bodice, a shimmering reflection of her heart and its green, glorious greed. “I am weird and I am wild, but I am also wonderful, I am strange and seductive, I am cruel but I can also be kind—”

She slammed down her fist, eyes wild as she turned to face him and in those eyes and her words were all the emotion she had held in the deepest, depths of her secret heart, terrified and desperate in equal measure to be placed out into the world. “But I am not some hapless maiden or trapped little princess who needs a savior. I exist to gratify no one’s desires but my own. And I will not change—”

She whirled on him then: determination and resolve alighting her eyes with a wild green glow—untamable and unstoppable, the ferocious strength of an oak as it battled the fierceness of a storm, unwilling to break, but able to bend. “Not even for you—who has enticed me in a matter no one else has.”

Atem’s eyes snapped open and when his gaze found hers, they were not the smoldering embers burning lowly with kindness and affection but an irascible wildfire. He took a long step towards her, his hand raised. For the span of a heartbeat, Bakura thought he was about to cease her throat. Instead, he caressed her cheek with a touch so gentle and unexpected it scorched her skin.

Never before had such terror and arousal struck her heart.

“Fools.” It was a harsh whisper, dangerous and low with indignance. “Fools, all of them to not see your true beauty as I do.”

In a last desperate attempt to guard her heart, Bakura squared her shoulders, shrink her wide eyes and forms with her parted lips. “And what beauty do you see?” Her voice is quiet, laced with an emotion she could not yet define. “When you look at me?”

A smile slit his face, curled at the corners, a living thing unleased and untamed like a predator feigning injury until its captures unlocked its cage. “Do you know why everyone loved the wild rose?”

Of course she did. It represented passion—both pleasure and pain, but indifferent to what relevance the question held, she merely nodded, face pinched with annoyance.

His smile curled at the corners. “It is because she is wild, fragrant, stunning to behold and all flock to glimpse her unmarred beauty, but it is also because she is dangerous.” His brows arched, a gleaming fang peeked over the rim of his smile. “She wears her thorns proudly and openly for all the world to see and all the world are drawn to her because of it, even more so. Yes, some are foolish enough to think they may domesticate her, tame her—try and clip her thorns. Such stupid men are often victims of their own stupidity and find themselves shredded—she is symbolic that it is possible for us to have both, to embrace the ‘and’ and not the ‘or’.”

Bakura’s irritation only grew and she opened her mouth to protest the comparison until he swopped forward like a shadow and said “But _you_ Bakura, are not a rose—you are something far grander. You,” he leaned so close that his words were a whisper against her lips, a ghost’s kiss.

“Are the Belladonna, the Deadly Nightshade: deception, danger, and death and all the dark desire that she encompasses.”

Whatever protested Bakura may have had died in her throat.

“There is a reason they call the Night shade, the _bella donna_ , for they recognize that she is not only a beautiful woman, she is a _dark_ woman—an ethereal beauty, so rich, so seductive, so otherworldly, they cannot help but covet it. Yet while she is beautiful to look at it, she is dangerous to touch. For unlike the rose whose embrace is sharp but fragrant, her is poison—unlike rose who wears her thorns proudly, hers is an internal power, a secret she keeps close to her heart and seen by none but those daring enough, not to court her, but to _embrace_ her. Beautiful to touch but don’t dare press it to your lips—unless, of course, that is what you want?”

A dark, dangerous edge crept into his voice sending shivers up her spine. His hand, still stroking her cheek, sent fiery tremors vibrating across her skin. “But mithridatism is no different than attempting to strip the rose of her thorns. To court the Belladonna one must not become _immune_ to her poison but _become_ poison itself, it is the belladonna’s poison that makes her beautiful. Makes her untamable, _unconquerable_. It is why they call her Night Shade: dark and dangerous and beautiful and terrifying as the night, and only one truly capable of embracing it all is worthy of her, and why, oh why, would they ever want to tame her? To strip her of what makes her so breathtakingly beautiful?”

He spoke the words with such vigor, such passion, that never in all her life had she seen such vehemence possessed on her behalf. He appeared half-mad as she was, but his was not a resignation but an eager embracement. “Do you not see, Bakura? Why would I even want to change you? To strip away all that makes you grand and glorious? You asked me what it is I see when I look at you? I see this—”

He cupped her face in both hands now and so overcome was she with dread and delight that she did nothing to stop him—on the contrary her blood sang at his touch. “I do not wish to tame you or save you—I believe we are the same you and I? You are the belladonna that embraced her dangerous beauty and hides her true self eager for someone to sample it—and I am a wildfire, burning and beautiful to look at but dangerous to touch, deadly if I allow my true passion to escape, and feared for it. I do not want someone to smother my ashes, I want someone who will stroke my embers. I want _you_ , both the glorious woman who fascinated me…and the assassin who poisoned her prey with her kiss.”

The champagne glass almost slipped form her fingers. No one, not even Mai knew _how_ she killed her victims. “How did you know about that?”

“Is that not why you wear it upon your lips?” he smiled, gesturing to his own. “Daring all who love you to test and see if they are courageous enough to taste? I noticed it, the unique shade of your rogue when I returned your wine.”

The glass _did_ slip from her fingers this time. He’d _recognized_ the poison on her lips…and he’d _kissed_ her _knowing_ that?

Looking deep in to his eyes, she saw now that the boy she’s been speaking to was not the man she saw before—not the fiery sun who’d kept up with her shadowy night upon the dance floor, but a mask, a gate: not a trick but a test, to see if she were worthy of the raging inferno that now blazed, wild with abandon—just as she’d tested him. Needed to see if he was worthy of opening the door to the dark, of embracing the shadow and the starlight and all its power and poison: of _her._

He pulled her close and his smile was a living thing, mad and marvelous. “I am not afraid of thorns…nor poison.”

She matched him with a smirk that was all madness—a fierce, furious madness called love. “Nor am I afraid of getting scorched.”

She grabbed him by the collar and dragged him down into a kiss. His lips crashed against her own—a warm, wet heat that was almost scorching and all consuming. His lips parted under her embrace and his tongue coaxed hers out to play—savoring the ambrosia that what the other’s lips. She realized then that the honey and spice she’d tasted earlier was no the whisky she’d poured but Atem’s own unique sent—fire and sunshine, and she the earth and shadow of pomegranates and finely aged wine.

She felt his hands leave her face dropping to her waist, pulling her close and all the world vanished at his touch. Unwilling to surrender the game just yet, she dropped her hands and shoved him away, savoring the surprise upon his face for once and departed for the garden. A saucy wink of invitation thrown over her shoulder.

To her delight but not her surprise, he ignited at the challenge and gave chase.

X X X

In the end they never did make it to the gardens—or up the stairs to a private room reserved for private lassions and names meant to be exchanged only in the dark—instead, their game of chase and challenge let them out and into the wilderness of the labyrinth outside. Going in, Bakura thought her gown of black and white would offer her the advantage, disappearing among the lacework of starlight and shadow of which she found herself kin where Atem, so bold and brightly colored, the contrast would surely betray him. She underestimated the camouflage the colored roses provided and the dancing infractions of the torchlight until he dashed over the hedged, appearing like a burning flash that made her release an utterly feminine shriek in her surprised delight and topple over had he not caught her ‘round the waist also laughing. By then she was tired of chase and pushed her lips against his.

His taste was heady on her tongue, the fires of a richly spiced whisky. Drunk on it, her vision was a haze of color and shadows and bursts of sensation.

His touches were different from her other lovers, who bit and took and craved and devoured to their own satisfaction. With him she did not feel oblivion but _everything_. She was _awake_ for his kisses. She _felt_ the warmth of his touch: his hand upon her waist, her fingers woven in the silky flames of his hair. His hat abandoned, her brooch unfastened, her bodice untied. Tasted his breath upon her skin. His wine-red lips, the taste of temptation, leaving stains upon the graceful curve of her neck, the junction where her skin met clothes. The rising swell of her breast, the other warm and spilling between his kneading fingers. His knee wedged between her thighs, her leg curled about his hip, her skirts pushed above her knees. His fingers walking up the inside of her thigh where the velvet of her long boots became subtle flesh.

The taste of his skin on her lips where she kissed his face, drawing his lips back up to her. The ashen smell of his hair, like burning sage and rosewood. His name on her lips. Hers a murmur down her neck, against her breasts. Long elegant fingers traveling along the curve of her hips, her waist, inside her skirts. Her own skipping his coat entirely to the slender waist.

Never in all her life had she craved the touch of someone else. He wrapped an arm around her waist, pulled away slightly leaving her breathless. His fingers moving under the curve of his mask. Saw the fire in his eyes, _knew_ _she_ was responsible for that fire.

“YOU!!!!” the heard the horrible animalistic howl before the crash.

They shot up, froze, convinced they were alone in the sylvan labyrinth, but then the adjacent undergrowth exploded. Boughs and branches and leaves and dirty scattered in a cyclone of destruction and at its eye, a hulking, brutish lupine form: all gleaming eyes and frosted fur, and shimmering jeweled claws.

In half a second, Atem moved her behind him: suddenly feral and Bakura barely had time to gasp as the savage, brawling figure of Keith Howard rose and stumbled half-dead and half-monstrous in his despicable wolf coat rose to his staggering feet. Face feral, mouth foaming, his eyes fixated on her, bright and blue with the fever of impending death, were not that of a man but some savage animal who had nothing, not even pride—only bloodlust and vengeance.

Bakura cursed and covered her bosom with the tatters of her bodice.

She should _never_ have wasted even a drop of her nightshade on that spoiled duke.

Growling, skirts swirling around her, she prepared for flight—and was interrupted by an iridescent flash of crimson, a phoenix mask falling silently at her feet. Atem leapt fearlessly upon the hulking giant, used his neck as an anchor and swooped around to stand upon the meaty mountain of his back and slammed the beast down. The hulking brute’s bulging muscles of which in life he’d boasted such abysmal pride useless against the slender, sleeker creature’s superior strength. The ground shook under the force of his weight.

And she watched wide-eyed with understanding as Atem’s fangs extended and sank into the brawler’s thick, meaty neck. The foaming mouth opened in a voiceless scream. His limbed failed in a desperate attempt to seize the creature, but Atem was quicker and lither, and soon they grew weak from both poison and blood loss. Instead of elegantly removing the two piercing fangs of his canines, Atem ripped them free from the man’s neck—let them think him the victim of some savage beast roaming wild in the night—and wiped the blood from his slips with and elegant swipe of his thumb. The spray and splatter disappearing into invisible obscurity against the crimson of his costume.

A loud gasp escaped her lips, not of horror but of recognition that gave way to realization.

He spun to her: stunned and caught.

“Forgive me,” he fumbled for words, suddenly subconscious.

And that was when she saw them, recognized them: his eyes. Sharp, cat-shaped with upturned corners and downward points in thick shadows beneath inky lashes forming elegant swirled shaped the pupils a single slit. The ruby color of his eyes, not some trick of the light or reflective sheen of his costume, as she’d previously thought, but a dulled rendition of their full color—a spectacular cerise red, vivid and vivacious, the color of dark cherries before they are ground into whine, of freshly spilled blood just before it dries, of carnal desires transformed into sinful delight—and had no hope of ever passing as human, the reason for the obscurity of his mask.

“A vampyre,” she breathed out her shock at having realized what he was. “You’re one of the vampyre.” From the mortal’s word for fire-angel, they were a rare breed of fae, born to both fire and darkness and known for their avarice for blood. Not even Queen Mai, to her recollection, had ever met one.

“I…It was never my intention to deceive you, I merely…” He rubbed his arm, nervous. She could only imagine the torment he must’ve endured for his unusual eyes, a betrayer of his true nature—how he might take no pleasure in his own uniqueness despite his desires. “I planned to show you, before we…” he resigned “I will not hold it against you if you are angry with me.”

“Angry,” His earlier words were more correct than he realized them: they were the same.

Swooping past him, she knelt over the now dead man with a look of hunger and satisfaction and pointed a single finger over his check. Her long black nail grew into a talon and with expert precision she sliced open the hollow of his chest and removed her prize from its crevice.

“I believe…” she whirled to him, hold out the heart she had split open, in a gesture of joining her in its devouring as she leaned against him, chest heaving in the tatters of her bodice. “That I am in love.”

**Author's Note:**

> In case it wasn't obvious, I am obsessed with all things Gothic, Faery, Dark Fantasy, Halloween and of course Masquerades--
> 
> This piece was both fun and a challenge tow rite but I love exploring concepts like this and I am SO happy with how it came out--and I was able to work out a few past relationships of my own through Bakura--I also loved designing her and Atem's outfits, Mai's and the castle and labyrinth at large to represent a sublimnal dark faeryland.
> 
> Sadly, I don't have a reference for Atem's but Bakura's was based on this, cept with a iridescent raven feather cloak: https://www.deviantart.com/saturngrl/art/Dark-Topaz-Princess-Dress-48928077


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